America’s National Parks Pop-up

I was watching Ken Burn’s documentary for PBS on the National Parks and lamenting that I have not been able to witness all the diverse landscapes and beautiful nature that our United States has to offer. It was not long ago that I was hiking down to the Rio Grande in New Mexico, but that is no match for majestic vistas of Yellowstone and other big parks. It seems difficult to find a balance between the fast pace of the metropolis and the peaceful reflections before a campfire. My desire to see more of this country was only heightened when I opened up the pop-up book America’s National Parks. Now this book has only been around for a few months and it had already been featured by Oprah and won a gold medal at the IPPY awards. The book itself is also raising money and awareness as a portion of the book sales go directly to the NPCA. How cool is that?! The good folks at NW Book Lovers are so passionate about this project which originated out of Oregon that they shared one of the Limited Editions with me. Check out their 2013 Holiday catalog to find this pop-up and many more interesting titles.

I had a chance to see an early pop-up from the book last year at the Movable Book Society conference when I sat down with the author, Don Compton. He explained how he had assembled a great team to create such a sincere tribute to “America’s best idea”. Inspired by classic WPA posters, Dave Ember illustrated 18 of the most popular national parks that span across the country. Bruce Foster used his paper folding mastery to take us to the depths of the Grand Canyon and witness Old Faithful rise a foot off the page. This excellent pop-up book was a true labor of love to one of our greatest national treasures and I will in turn, treasure it as it rests on my bookshelf. Where it will stand as a gentle reminder to see more of the U.S. and to heed the words of John Muir when he says, “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

~Kyle

This entry was posted
on Thursday, December 5th, 2013 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.